tire balancing beads?

[Indy4570]

anybody have personal experience with these tire balancing beads? they have been around now for 25 years. I first heard of them for motorcycles.

[MiCarl]

I've never used them, but did own a motorcycle service shop. I eventually reached the conclusion that a motorcyclist generally couldn't "feel" if the tires were balanced or not.

My take though is that if throwing what is basically a hand full of ceramic pellets in the tire would adequately balance it why do the vehicle manufactures pay someone to do it with a balancing machine and weights?

[SamsFarm]

Thought I heard they use something like that on big truck tires.

My brother has a 3500hd (19.5 tires) and I took it to a tire shop for new rear tires for him years ago.

If I remember right they put packs of something in each.

I had a motorcycle and it had balanced wheels / tires with weights.

Did a u-turn and kissed a curb with it, and after that it would shimmy some at 120mph.

A new rim, bearings and a new balance job (with weights) had it back to running smooth again with no shimmy!

[ricky racer]

I've used them for years in my motorcycle tires. I've never had any ill effect with their use, only good experiences. Using the balance beads I've experienced very even tire wear without the cupping that you see so often on motorcycle tires.
Yogie may weigh in on this. Some of his customers use them in their large trucks that are used off road somewhat. He told me that with the mud that gets picked up on their tires or wheels, the balance beads compensate for the mud and help keep the tires balanced.

[Bill E Bob]

Got them in my '47 sedan with 16 x 6.00 tires and they're a bit of a b**ch getting them inside an inner tube ! Otherwise they have been great, AND, no crappy weights hanging off the rims!

[ricky racer]

Got them in my '47 sedan with 16 x 6.00 tires and they're a bit of a b**ch getting them inside an inner tube ! Otherwise they have been great, AND, no crappy weights hanging off the rims!

Wow!! That's a sweeeet ride!

[Gary Dotson]

When those beads were first introduces, the company tested them at our test center. The engineer that, that was there, would only refer to them as “the product” never by their name. We tested them mostly in heavy trucks and the engineer never revealed the results to us. He was very secretive! I had a problem tire on my Riviera that we couldn’t get to balance out right so I put beads in that one tire, they seemed to help, slightly. Never used them in anything, we considered them “snake oil”.